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Q2 Weather: A few tricks and treats await Montanans today in the weather

Posted at 4:07 PM, Oct 31, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-31 18:07:15-04

BILLINGS- Happy Halloween to everybody. The weather in Billings is actually very good for the kids trick-or-treating this Wednesday afternoon.

We have partly cloudy skies and the temps already into the 50s at 2 p.m.

Elsewhere around eastern Montana, most of our regular reporting stations have temperatures into the 40s and 50s.

The only cool spot in the state is in the southwest corner. There, at 2 p.m., the temperatures  were only in the 30s.

Our Halloween forecast for Billings and Glendive shows temperatures will be 47 degrees at 6 p.m. There will be cloudy skies with cool and breezy conditions.

But the real trick and no treat is the new snow that is falling from Great Falls all the way down in Yellowstone National Park.

Above the 6,000-foot level, we could see three to seven inches of snow around Great Falls and four to eight inches of snow around Bozeman in Gallatin and Madison counties.

In the higher elevations, the snow could range anywhere from eight to 14 inches through 9 a.m. Thursday.

You can see the storm moving in from the northwest on the Doppler radar. We are seeing heavier snow in the mountains and scattered light rain showers in the valleys.

The computer models seem to think that this storm will follow the spine of the Rockies and Billings, we just have ringside seats for it. We could wave at it as it goes by.

A new cold front will drop down from Canada on Thursday morning and push into the Black Hills of South Dakota. This will cool off much of eastern Montana.

This next system will continue to push most of the snow away from Billings and back up into the mountains.

On Friday, another storm system moves in from the west that could bring more rain and snow to central Montana as well as the West.

BILLINGS FORECAST

TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance for evening rain showers overnight, then a chance of rain mixing with snow after 3 AM. West winds 10 to 20 mph. Low 36 degrees.

THURSDAY: Partly sunny with a 20 percent chance of rain showers in the early morning then rain possible in the afternoon. Northwest winds 10 to 20 mph high 51 degrees.

FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance for rain. Southwest winds 10 to 20 mph. High 57 degrees.